The Johan Heyns Memorial Lecture 2017 was delivered on Wednesday, 24 May 2017 by prof Etienne de Villiers, emeritus professor in Christian Ethics in UP’s Faculty of Theology.

His challenging and provocative lecture was themed ‘Christian Ethics and Secularisation: Business as usual?’  In his answer, he highlighted the challenges that the churches have to face that are posed from the impact from modernisation on Christian ethics, namely firstly pluralising and fragilising, and secondly with regard to the public role of Christian ethics. The latter urges the churches to pursue agreement on secular moral values for enhancing the flourishing of all life on earth, and by actively supporting initiatives based on these moral value. The former implies an attitude of tolerance and demands critical discussion. In these sense, it is surely not business as usual any longer!